


Fire and Ice

by Cyme



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, End Game, F/M, J/B Shuffled Challenge, Post - A Dance With Dragons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-25
Updated: 2013-10-25
Packaged: 2017-12-30 11:08:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1017869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyme/pseuds/Cyme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The longest night is upon them. Mist fills the forest, and men are at the gates. All Jaime and Brienne must do now is find each other, for beyond the walls of Winterfell, death waits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fire and Ice

**Author's Note:**

> An entry for the Jaime/Brienne Shuffled challenge, if anyone is still writing these.... Song is Lana Del Rey's "Summertime Sadness." See end notes for lyrics, or you can look it up online - the song is better :)
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing.

I. 

“Come on, come on.” Brienne stretched over an icy parapet and searched the horizon for the murky glow of dawn. 

She prayed to the Maid, the Crone, the Mother and the Warrior – to any god who would hear her: Let the light come. But the sky above Winterfell remained clear and dark; a slivered moon hung like a scythe over the Godswood. Below, the forest was all shadows and bruised snow. 

Brienne pressed against the granite wall of the Hunter’s Gate, as if the freezing stone could give her comfort. The cold air was sharp and smelled of iron. She took a ragged breath, and then another. Darkness settled over her like a noose. She remembered her history lessons well. The sun would not rise this day. 

Suddenly, Brienne was up and running, her boots sliding and slipping along the ice-covered wall. She slid and crushed her shoulder against the entrance to the stairwell that led down to the courtyard of the Great Keep. Brienne bit her lip and pushed herself to her feet. 

A soldier should never abandon her post, but Brienne didn’t care. They were coming. 

II. 

They were blowing the horn along the walls outside the Keep: one blast, then two and three. On and on, the howls kept coming, sounding like a pack of bloody wolves. 

Jaime stood at the window in his room and twisted his right arm back and forth. His gold hand glinted in the pale moonlight. It was a beautiful hand, but useless in a fight. Slowly, he lifted the heavy red cloak from his cot and fastened it around his neck. The clasp was gold and fashioned into the head of a snarling lion; it’s ruby eyes glimmering like beads of blood. 

Jaime dropped his left hand to the hilt of his sword. He looked around the room: Brienne’s empty cot in the corner, his bedroll spread out next to it; their packs in a pile next to the door; a tallow candle stuck to the table in the center of the room, it’s flame weak and flickering in the chilly air. Outside, he knew there would be mayhem. She would be searching for him, waiting for him to join her at her side. Jaime felt his breath catch and flicker in his chest to the same unsteady pulse as the candle flame. 

The horns sounded again: clear and true and desperate. This little room felt like a crypt, but Jaime had never felt so alive. He was on fire. 

III. 

She searched for him in the courtyard, Oathkeeper gripped tight in her hand. The courtyard was full of movement. Men streamed in and out of the armory, their weapons and their armor clanging and crashing. Every face Brienne searched seemed the same – eyes wide and full of fear. The men were panicking, like deer scattering from an unknown threat. But they knew this foe – the Others and their wights– knew them well. 

She stepped to the side to allow a soldier pushing a wagon of unlit torches to pass her. They were lighting fires along the walls and at the gates. Soon, skinny shadows would dance like wild things at every corner and in every nook of Winterfell.

Brienne knew they would burn more bodies today than they ever had before. The thought filled her mouth with an acrid taste. They had been fighting the dead for so long, Brienne almost forgot what it felt like to spill a live man’s blood. To see the light go out in his eyes, to leave his body whole and untouched upon the ground.

She did not think it possible to miss the war in the south, but today she did. She missed the warmth of summer, birdsong, the scent of grass. Sometimes Brienne dreamt of Renly, sometimes Hyle Hunt. She dreamt of her father and cried for him, wished he could see her now. She dreamt of days spent on the road with Jaime – of riding through falling leaves in the golden woods that edged the Mountains of the Moon, of his laughing face across a campfire, of steel ringing as they practiced in the predawn gloom. That was freedom. That was life. 

The horns sounded again, snapping Brienne out of her reverie. The courtyard was brighter with the fires lit, and Brienne peered across the mass of rushing bodies until her eyes caught on a flash of red and gold. 

Gods, she breathed. He is here. 

IV. 

Jaime swooped down on her as if Brienne were no more than a mouse and he a hawk. He grabbed her arm with his good hand and dragged her toward the East Gate. The fires were lit here, and men stood in a huddled throng before the gates. Their weapons and their torches sent lights skittering across the granite walls. 

Brienne followed him to the edge of the crowd, off to the right side of the gate. He aimed to inch toward the front of the group, to face death without fear, but suddenly Brienne tugged him back. 

He turned to her. Brienne ducked her head and said something, but Jaime could not hear her over the soldiers’ clamor behind them. He could see the tension in her shoulders, and he wondered how she could stand so still in the frenzy that was Winterfell. He pushed her toward the wall. 

“You will have to say your peace louder, wench. We face death tonight, so you best make it count.” 

It was a jape, but Brienne’s hurried response made his heart beat hard against his ribs.

“Sansa, Podrick, Ser Hyle Hunt,” she murmured, “the Blackfish, your lord brother, your children, me.”

She was watching him with those astonishing eyes of hers, searching his face for some kind of recognition. 

“What is this?” Jaime gasped, as if she had driven a spear through his side. 

“Sansa, Podrick, Ser Hyle Hunt,” she said louder, “the Blackfish, your lord brother, your children. Me. These are the oaths you kept, Jaime Lannister.”

Brienne looked at him carefully, and he saw that her eyes were sad and dark. Firelight cast the scar on her cheek into sharp relief; the twisted flesh was not pleasant to look upon, but Jaime could not remember her without it. Her face was wide and plain, and he knew that beneath her armor, she was a crisscross of scars and ruddy bruises. But he did not care. He could have kissed her then.

“Why do you tell me this?” He managed finally. His voice was a husk; she had gutted him like a quick breeze to a flame.

“Because we die tonight,” she whispered, “and because I do not want you to forget what you are worth.”

V. 

Jaime and Brienne stood before the closed gates, swords at the ready. Men crowded around them with weapons and torches, speculating on what lay beyond the walls. The forest was silent, the wights made no sound, but an eerie mist was creeping over the edges of the parapets and snaking down along the granite blocks. 

“Come on, come on.” Brienne ached with anticipation. Jaime stood solemn and straight beside her, shadows playing along the scarred planes of his face. 

She itched to touch him, to make one last fleeting connection before the evils of Winter swallowed them whole. She had never touched a man in tenderness before – not the way she wanted to touch to Jaime, to stroke his brow and run fingers through his golden curls. Sometimes she imagined he would touch her back, cup her ruined cheek and press his warm body against her own. She shook her head at the thought – haunting dreams that did not belong to winter nights.

Jaime shifted beside her, his eyes on the gate. “Are you afraid?” 

Brienne shook her head. “Nothing scares me anymore.” 

Jaime laughed a laugh so out of place that Brienne could not help her smile. “You are a terrible liar, wench.”

Across the courtyard came the sound of distant fighting. Someone nearby called for the East Gate to open, and the wood creaked mightily in the icy air. Brienne felt, rather than saw, the soldiers straighten at the sound. 

“I imagine this is what it feels like before a fighter enters the fighting pit,” she said. 

Jaime glanced at her, his green eyes tender. “Did it feel like this at Harrenhal?”

Brienne’s smile died on her lips. “No,” she answered, “at Harrenhal I died a thousand deaths and lost a thousand different hopes. Here it shall be just one.”

Jaime opened his mouth, but said nothing. Behind them, the gate swung wide, mist rushing in to fill the gaping maw. The wights were wailing now on the other side of the wall – a terrible sound that sent fingers of ice up Brienne’s spine. The red light of the fires battled weakly against the ghostly blue cast of the mist, the White Walkers’ vivid eyes shining in the forest just beyond. 

Brienne licked her lips and moved toward the gate, but before she could walk into the mist, Jaime shouted her name against the rising din. She turned toward him; he was closer than she had ever hoped to dare. He gripped her waist with his golden hand, Widow’s Wail hanging in his sword hand at his side. 

“We die tonight, my Lady,” he whispered against her cheek, his breath a cloud around them. “Kiss be hard before you go.”

She licked her lips again, only to find ice on her tongue.

**Author's Note:**

> Kiss me hard before you go  
> Summertime sadness  
> I just wanted you to know  
> That baby you're the best
> 
> Got my red dress on tonight  
> Dancing in the dark in the pale moonlight  
> Got my hair up real big beauty queen style  
> Highheels off, I'm feeling alive
> 
> Oh, my God, I feel it in the air  
> Telephone wires above are sizzling like a snare  
> Honey I'm on fire I feel it everywhere  
> Nothing scares me anymore  
> ... 2, 3, 4
> 
> Kiss me hard before you go  
> Summertime sadness  
> I just wanted you to know  
> That baby you're the best
> 
> I've got that summertime, summertime sadness  
> Got that summertime, summertime sadness  
> Got that summertime, summertime sadness  
> Oh, oh
> 
> I'm feelin' electric tonight  
> Cruising down the coast goin' by 99  
> Got my bad baby by my heavenly side  
> I know if I go, I'll die happy tonight.
> 
> Oh, my God, I feel it in the air  
> Telephone wires above are sizzling like a snare  
> Honey I'm on fire I feel it everywhere  
> Nothing scares me anymore  
> ... 2, 3, 4
> 
> Kiss me hard before you go  
> Summertime sadness  
> I just wanted you to know  
> That baby you're the best
> 
> I've got that summertime, summertime sadness  
> S-s-summertime, summertime sadness  
> Got that summertime, summertime sadness  
> Oh, oh
> 
> I think I'll miss you forever  
> Like the stars miss the sun in the morning skies  
> Later's better than never  
> Even if you're gone I'm gonna drive, drive
> 
> I've got that summertime, summertime sadness  
> S-s-summertime, summertime sadness  
> Got that summertime, summertime sadness  
> Oh, oh
> 
> Kiss me hard before you go  
> Summer time sadness  
> I just wanted you to know  
> That baby you're the best
> 
> I've got that summertime, summertime sadness  
> S-s-summertime, summertime sadness  
> Got that summertime, summertime sadness  
> Oh, oh


End file.
